Starview
by MetaBlade
Summary: 'From your perspective, it's completely IMPOSSIBLE and terrifying and unthinkable to live without vision and I get that. But it's really not as terrible as you think.' Daisy accompanies Luigi on a date to a local fairground and learns something new about him. (Part of my AU oneshot series where Luigi is blind; stands alone.)


**A/N: This is another oneshot in my small ongoing series, an AU where Luigi is blind.**

**The other oneshots can be found on my account and are called 'Sounds Like Textures' and 'Dance in the Dark' if you want to check them out! They can all be read in any order.**

**Enjoy!**

* * *

It was a frosty night in the middle of November, and the sky was as clear as a crystal.

I wrapped my scarf around my neck a little more tightly and folded my arms while I waited for Luigi to catch up. I hadn't anticipated that it would be _this_ cold, otherwise I might've insisted that we meet in a nice warm restaurant or somewhere similar... but there was a new fairground open in Toad Town, and Luigi had wanted to go to it. And I could never find the willpower to say no to him, not when he gave me that silly smile that I'd fallen in love with oh so many years ago.

He stopped just behind me, cautiously feeling the ground around him with his cane. My grin faded into something more wistful as I watched him. So much had changed since his 'accident' that had been almost two years ago to this day. He had never explained the details of exactly how he'd ended up losing his vision. Apparently he had told Mario - after several weeks of nonstop pestering from his older brother - but he had never wanted to tell me, or anyone else.

I'd respected his decision, even though it killed me to not know what had happened. I _wanted_ to know, even if it was none of my business. Who cared about politeness? I often poked my nose in where it didn't belong, and if I really wanted something, I'd usually figure out a way to get it. But Luigi was just as stubborn as me, and I knew he wouldn't tell me the story until he was ready.

I was also aware that Luigi had grown to accept his blindness much, much faster than anyone else. Half his friends and family were still mourning the loss of his sight while the man himself had simply shrugged and gotten over it, with a peacefulness that shocked me. I couldn't imagine myself coping so well with going blind. Maybe it was something you just couldn't understand unless you were thrown into that situation.

'There's a lot of lights,' he said quietly, making me lean down to hear him.

'You can see those?' I asked.

'Y-yeah. Some of them. I can still see light, just not... shapes or colours or anything like that.'

He scraped the tip of his cane against the ground, and I tried to imagine how it must feel to not see anything besides light. Disorientating? Luigi didn't seem perturbed. He seemed fine.

'Is there a Ferris wheel?' he asked curiously.

'Yeah,' I replied. It was in the very centre of the fairground, a huge circle illuminated with green, red and gold lights. The staff were already getting in the mood for Christmas despite it being over a month away - but I wasn't complaining. The decorations sure looked pretty.

'Let's go on it,' Luigi suggested. He turned towards me, grinning a little nervously. It was ridiculous that after so many dates - and managing to stay together through so many trials - he was still shy around me. 'Please?'

'Sure, sweetie. Sounds great to me.'

He took hold of my elbow and let me lead him towards the Ferris wheel, tucking his cane against his side as he did so. He was perfectly capable of walking around without help, but it was faster and easier to let me guide him. I think he also wanted to prove that he trusted me. Luigi's trust was hard to come by, but our years of togetherness had cemented a bond between us that I didn't think would ever break - as cheesy as that sounds.

I sighed as we approached the wheel, my breath drifting out as a white cloud. 'There's a really long line to get to the ride,' I said.

'Oh.' He was silent for a few moments. 'Do you want to... come back later?'

I glanced around. There were lots of other rides we could go on, but most of them had even longer lines than this one. There were food places too, but I didn't want to eat right before going on the rides. That was a recipe for a very messy and humiliating disaster. 'No, we'll just wait in the line,' I said, and Luigi made a small humming noise of agreement.

The fairground was only getting more busy as the night drew on. Crowds of people were flocking around us and there was barely enough room to turn around, much less walk to wherever you wanted to go. And the _noise..._ Luigi didn't seem bothered by it, but it was hurting my head. Toad Town was usually a quiet place, but it looked like every single resident had decided to visit the fairground at the same time, and the result was nothing short of chaos.

I tilted my head back, distracting myself by gazing up at the night sky. It really was a beautiful sight; completely clear except for a few thin, wispy grey-blue clouds floating along the horizons. The sky directly above my head was a deep black, speckled with shards of diamond. _Isn't it strange how the longer you look up there, the more stars you see? It's like they're just popping into existence..._

And Luigi would never see them. Of course, he had seen plenty of stars before he went blind, but every now and again he would casually mention that his visual memories - as he called them - were starting to disappear. So he couldn't remember what a lot of things looked like anymore.

I swallowed. I would _not_ ruin this perfect night out together by thinking about all the things my boyfriend couldn't do or experience anymore. Luigi was perfectly content with the way things were, and the last thing I wanted was to disrupt his happiness with my own grim thoughts.

We waited an agonising forty minutes in line before we were able to reach the Ferris wheel. A staff Toad ushered us up into the platform, and I eyed the compartment swinging precariously in front of us. I wasn't the least bit afraid of heights... but it was still a _little_ bit unnerving to realise that, if the Ferris wheel broke while we were at the top, we'd be stuck nearly a hundred feet above the ground.

'Watch your step!' said the staff Toad, He grabbed the side of the compartment to hold it steady and gestured for us to climb in.

'Thanks!' I said brightly, grinning at him before moving forwards. Luigi tightened his grip on my elbow as we stepped inside the compartment, chuckling quietly when he felt my hesitation.

'It's not that bad,' he said, gingerly letting go of me and walking in a circle around the small, enclosed space. 'I expected worse.'

I sat down on one of the seats. 'C'mon, sit next to me,' I said, digging into my coat pocket for my phone. 'I wanna take a picture of us.'

'What, so you can send it to Peach and brag about what a good time we're having?' He grinned mischieviously as he settled down beside me.

'How did you guess? Don't worry, I won't be _too_ mean. I just want her and Mario to realise what they could be doing right now instead of having dinner at the castle.'

We took the picture quickly, me leaning against Luigi's shoulder and holding the phone at arm's length. Then I nearly dropped it as the compartment suddenly jolted.

'We're moving!' he called out.

The staff Toad had finished ushering everybody onto the Ferris wheel. Luckily, Luigi and I had this compartment all to ourselves. I wrapped an arm around him, feeling a surge of childlike excitement as the wheel began to turn, very slowly at first, but picking up speed as it went along. Of course, it never got _that_ fast. It was only a Ferris wheel. But it wasn't long before we found ourselves rising to its highest point, the entire fairground spread out like a map beneath us, all the other rides looking puny by comparison.

A pang of wistfulness hit me as the wheel slowed down again, allowing us a good view of the fairground from our vantage point. I almost pulled out my phone again to take some pictures, but decided against it. It didn't seem fair that I could have a physical way to look back on these special moments between us, while Luigi had nothing but his memory of the sounds, smells, and textures - he would never be able to enjoy this beautiful view. Not in real life, and not in a photograph.

'Is everything alright?' he said tentatively, looking up at me with the little crease between his eyebrows that told me he was worried.

I sighed. 'No... I mean... it's nothing. Nothing you need to worry about, sweetie.'

He huffed. 'You know that saying that just means I'll want to know even more, right?'

That was probably true. 'Well, I don't want to say it because it's stupid, and it's not something I should even be thinking about because it's so stupid.'

'That's not reassuring.'

I found his hand, cold from the night's bite, and squeezed it firmly. 'It's just that... the view from up here is so amazing. And you can't see it. I know you don't really care that much, but I feel bad that you can't experience the same things everyone else can. Not anymore.' He was utterly silent, and I added, 'See, I told you it was going to be stupid.'

'No!' he said quickly. 'It's not. I understand - probably better than you think.' He looked away, towards the door of our compartment. We were now at the highest point of the Ferris wheel and I could see the gleaming white stone and lights of Peach's Castle on the horizon. 'I guess, if someone came to me before I went blind and told me about all of this, I would've freaked out.' He gave a small, weak laugh. 'I know I would have. So I can understand why you feel that way. Because you don't get it - you're not wearing these shoes. From your perspective, it's completely _impossible_ and terrifying and unthinkable to live without vision and I get that. But it's really not as terrible as you think.'

'Yeah,' I said, surprising myself by actually recognising the sense in his words. 'I guess if I was put into the same situation, I'd figure out how to deal, just like you have. But don't you ever think about how you can't experience any of this stuff anymore? Like seeing the view from a Ferris wheel, or the Christmas lights, or the stars in the sky...' _Or your friends and family,_ I added silently in my mind. He would never see me, or Mario, or Toadette again.

He shrugged. 'I know it's hard to believe, but vision just isn't a part of my life anymore. It's almost like it never was to begin with. I still experience everything you do, just differently.'

'So...' I looked out of the window, seeing that we were beginning our slow descent back towards the earth. 'The thing I'm experiencing most right now is the view outside this compartment. What about you?'

'The movement,' he said immediately. 'The feeling of the Ferris wheel moving... the floor rolling... it's weird, but I can kinda feel how high up we are. And that's cool.' He gave a nervous laugh. 'If I wasn't so afraid of heights.'

I kept holding his hand as we descended, watching the fairground come alive around us.

'I guess sometimes, I'm just worried that you're not happy,' I said after a while. 'We all know that you cope with this amazingly well, but...'

'I'm happy,' he said without hesitation. He eased his hand out of my grasp and wrapped his fingers around my hand, reversing our positions. 'I think I'm maybe happier than I've been in a long time. I'm not _glad_ that this happened, but... I don't resent it. I enjoy my life as much as I did before, just in a different way.' He reached up with his other hand and tugged the brim of his cap down to shadow his face, as if embarrassed by how much he'd revealed about himself. But I was smiling.

He squeaked in surprise as I pulled his cap back up and gave him a quick kiss on the nose, before tugging the brim back down again and laughing while he spluttered incoherently, as flustered by my affection as he'd been on the day we first kissed.

'Love you, Weegee,' I said, standing up as I felt the Ferris wheel grind to a halt.

He was too tongue-tied to respond, but as he stood up and took hold of my elbow, he managed to find the courage to stretch up and kiss me on the cheek. It was lightning-fast and he pulled away before I could do more than blink in surprise.

'Well,' I said as we stepped out of the compartment, 'what should we do next?'

After a short discussion, we agreed to visit the hotdog place and get some food before continuing our exploration of the fairground. 'Mario's gonna be really jealous when we tell him about all of this,' Luigi mumbled as we set off. 'He wanted to go to the fairground tonight, but Peach wanted him to stay with her for dinner...'

The mental image of Mario's surprised, disappointed expression as he was dragged off by an excitable Peach was the thing to complete my evening, and we laughed together as we hurried off through the light-filled paradise in search of food.


End file.
